The One Time American Troops Fought Russians Was at the End of World War I—and They Lost

Thousands of U.S. soldiers sent to guard military storehouses from the Germans were instead ordered to wage war on the Bolsheviks

U.S. soldiers warm themselves by a campfire on the front lines in northern Russia in January 1919, two months after armistice.Library of Congress

By

Michael M. Phillips

Nov. 9, 2018 9:00 a.m. ET

In late February 1919, the soldiers of Company B reached the breaking point, when griping gave way to mutiny.

The Americans had expected to face Germans on the Western Front. Yet three months after the Nov. 11 armistice ended the Great War, they were instead fighting Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia’s frigid European north.